The Visible Man and Other Stories Read Free Page B

him, smack , like an outfielder catching a fly ball. He lay spread-eagled, flat on his face against the damp earth, gasping for air while everything seemed slowly to spin, the resin-smelling grass tickling his nose, tiny furtive insects scampering invisibly across his hands. When he could breathe again, he found that some of his panic had also gone. He sat up. He’d been leaving a trail like a goddamned elephant; he’d have to start being a little slier. If he trampled the grass and left a flattened wake behind him, it would be like a giant arrow pointing the way he had gone. He wouldn’t last an hour that way before the cops ran him down. He set off at a diagonal to his former path, picking his way with care, forcing himself to be slow. This way, perhaps he had a chance. More than he’d had a while ago, at least.
    Rowan reached a stand of scrub woods and pushed his pace up to a fast trot, taking a few more headers as the terrain got rougher. Every time the tree branches moved in the wind all the patterns of light and darkness would flow and reform, and he kept mistaking shadow for ground. Once he dropped four feet down a concealed embankment. He kept up the pace. If he broke an ankle he was finished, but he couldn’t afford to slow down either. They’d almost certainly catch him if they fielded a search party anytime soon. But Route 1 was infrequently patroled, that was in his favor, and the Boston people wouldn’t miss the sheriff for a while yet. If only he could get even an hour’s lead—
    After a few minutes, the woods began to die away into a region of small isolated trees and high bramble thickets. Rowan slid down a final bluff and found himself in someone’s alfalfa field. His second wind was long gone, and now every breath brought him a stab of pain in his side. He began to work his way around the field, skirting the outermost furrow. He walked slowly and painfully. Sweat had dried uncomfortably on his skin, making him itch, and his clothes were full of burrs and stickers. On the horizon, he could just make out the peaked roof of a farm building, thumbnail-small from here, gray tile glinting in the sun. A thin column of smoke rose black from a chimney, making a long lazy line across the sky. Rowan was halfway across the field, his shoes filling with loam at every step, when a dog began to bark in the distance.
    Rowan walked faster, but the barking became louder and closer. A goddamn watchdog then, definitely coming after him. He faced around, at bay, too beat-out to run for the tree line.
    The barking swelled into an angry challenging roar, and then cut off, ominous and abrupt. Impossible to tell which way it was coming in at him, he thought, and at that same instant felt a flash of searing pain as his pants leg was torn away by something invisible. Rowan cursed and kicked out wildly. His foot scored a solid hit on something, and the dog yelped. Rowan kicked out again, missed completely, and had to do a lurching gracestep to recover his balance. Pawprints appeared in the soft loam as the dog danced back out of range. Rowan realized that if he kept near the furrow he’d be able to track the dog’s movements in the loam. So when a line of pawprints came rushing directly in toward him like the wake of a torpedo, he judged his distance carefully and then lashed out with all his strength. His foot hit something with the clean, solid whump of a dropkicked football. The dog yelped again. It was apparently lifted off its feet by the impact and sent rolling across the top of the furrow—at least, that was how Rowan interpreted the sudden flattening of alfalfa and scattering of loam. Rowan started walking again, with great deliberation. Judging by the sound, the dog continued to trace snarling figure-eights around him at a safe distance, but it did not attack again.
    Rowan scrambled up into the scrub brush on the far side of the field and started off again, limping slightly, unwilling to take time to tend to the